Conexant announced the first generation of video decoder chips compliant with the MPEG-4, Part 10, H.264 Advanced Video Coding standard. H.264 Advanced Video Coding promises more efficient digital bandwidth usage by facilitating higher levels of compression, thereby reducing the data rate required for HDTV video signals.
U.S. HDTV broadcast and cable signals, as well as other world HDTV signals, are coded using MPEG-2 compression technology, which is not compatible with H.264 decoding technology. Replacement of MPEG-2 codec technology with H.264's more efficient coding would render current HDTV receiving devices obsolete, but it might be feasible to add other services using H.264 to current DTV multiplexes.
The new codec technology could be applied to a variety of non-broadcast applications, such as video over IP, video telephony, HD DVD, and wireless applications.
